Charles Dickens died in 1870, the same year in which universal elementary education was introduced. During the following generation a mass reading public emerged, and with it the term ‘best-seller’ ...
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Charles Dickens died in 1870, the same year in which universal elementary education was introduced. During the following generation a mass reading public emerged, and with it the term ‘best-seller’ was coined. In new and cheap editions Dickens's stories sold hugely, but these were progressively outstripped in quantity by the likes of Hall Caine and Marie Corelli, Charles Garvice, and Nat Gould. Who has now heard of such writers? Yet Hall Caine, for one, boasted in 1908 of having made more money from his pen than any previous author. This book presents a panoramic view of literary life in Britain over half a century from 1870 to 1918, analysing authors' relations with the reading public and how reputations were made and unmade. It explores readers' habits, the book trade, popular literary magazines, and the role of reviewers, and examines the construction of a classical canon by critics concerned about a supposed corruption of popular taste. Certain writers became celebrities, and a literary tourism grew around their haunts. They advertised commodities from cigarettes to toothpaste; they also advertised themselves via interviews, profiles, and carefully-posed photographs. They paraded across North America on lecture tours, and everywhere their names were pushed by a new profession, literary agents. Writers' attitudes to religion still mattered in this period. At the same time, however, they exploited their position in the public eye to campaign on all manner of issues, including female suffrage, which saw authors ranged both for and against; and during the Great War many penned propaganda. This substantial book amounts to a collective biography of a generation of writers and their world.Less

Writers, Readers, and Reputations : Literary Life in Britain 1870-1918

Philip Waller

Published in print: 2008-05-15

Charles Dickens died in 1870, the same year in which universal elementary education was introduced. During the following generation a mass reading public emerged, and with it the term ‘best-seller’ was coined. In new and cheap editions Dickens's stories sold hugely, but these were progressively outstripped in quantity by the likes of Hall Caine and Marie Corelli, Charles Garvice, and Nat Gould. Who has now heard of such writers? Yet Hall Caine, for one, boasted in 1908 of having made more money from his pen than any previous author. This book presents a panoramic view of literary life in Britain over half a century from 1870 to 1918, analysing authors' relations with the reading public and how reputations were made and unmade. It explores readers' habits, the book trade, popular literary magazines, and the role of reviewers, and examines the construction of a classical canon by critics concerned about a supposed corruption of popular taste. Certain writers became celebrities, and a literary tourism grew around their haunts. They advertised commodities from cigarettes to toothpaste; they also advertised themselves via interviews, profiles, and carefully-posed photographs. They paraded across North America on lecture tours, and everywhere their names were pushed by a new profession, literary agents. Writers' attitudes to religion still mattered in this period. At the same time, however, they exploited their position in the public eye to campaign on all manner of issues, including female suffrage, which saw authors ranged both for and against; and during the Great War many penned propaganda. This substantial book amounts to a collective biography of a generation of writers and their world.

This chapter presents a reading of Coleridge's 1817 ‘literary life’. The focus is on the text's difficult struggles with the idea of self-representation in writing. Autobiography is central to the ...
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This chapter presents a reading of Coleridge's 1817 ‘literary life’. The focus is on the text's difficult struggles with the idea of self-representation in writing. Autobiography is central to the philosophical and literary projects of the book, but it also disrupts them. These ambivalences are closely related to the anxieties surrounding self-writing — the circulation and reception of the ‘I’ in print — which have been explored in the preceding chapters.Less

Biographia Literaria

James Treadwell

Published in print: 2005-01-20

This chapter presents a reading of Coleridge's 1817 ‘literary life’. The focus is on the text's difficult struggles with the idea of self-representation in writing. Autobiography is central to the philosophical and literary projects of the book, but it also disrupts them. These ambivalences are closely related to the anxieties surrounding self-writing — the circulation and reception of the ‘I’ in print — which have been explored in the preceding chapters.

This book offers a new way to understand the divisions that organize twentieth-century poetry. It argues that the most important conflict is not between styles or aesthetic politics, but between ...
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This book offers a new way to understand the divisions that organize twentieth-century poetry. It argues that the most important conflict is not between styles or aesthetic politics, but between poets who seek to preserve or produce the incommensurable particularity of experience by making powerful objects, and poets whose radical commitment to abstract personhood seems altogether incompatible with experience—and with poems. Reading across the apparent gulf that separates traditional and avant-garde poets, the book reveals the common philosophical urgency that lies behind diverse forms of poetic difficulty—from William Butler Yeats's esoteric symbolism and George Oppen's minimalism and silence to Frank O'Hara's joyful slightness and the Language poets' rejection of traditional aesthetic satisfactions. For these poets, what begins as a practical question about the conduct of literary life—what distinguishes a poet or group of poets?—ends up as an ontological inquiry about social life: What is a person and how is a community possible? In the face of the violence and dislocation of the twentieth century, these poets resist their will to mastery, shy away from the sensual richness of their strongest work, and undermine the particularity of their imaginative and moral visions—all in an effort to allow personhood itself to emerge as an undeniable fact making an unrefusable claim.Less

Being Numerous : Poetry and the Ground of Social Life

Oren Izenberg

Published in print: 2011-01-23

This book offers a new way to understand the divisions that organize twentieth-century poetry. It argues that the most important conflict is not between styles or aesthetic politics, but between poets who seek to preserve or produce the incommensurable particularity of experience by making powerful objects, and poets whose radical commitment to abstract personhood seems altogether incompatible with experience—and with poems. Reading across the apparent gulf that separates traditional and avant-garde poets, the book reveals the common philosophical urgency that lies behind diverse forms of poetic difficulty—from William Butler Yeats's esoteric symbolism and George Oppen's minimalism and silence to Frank O'Hara's joyful slightness and the Language poets' rejection of traditional aesthetic satisfactions. For these poets, what begins as a practical question about the conduct of literary life—what distinguishes a poet or group of poets?—ends up as an ontological inquiry about social life: What is a person and how is a community possible? In the face of the violence and dislocation of the twentieth century, these poets resist their will to mastery, shy away from the sensual richness of their strongest work, and undermine the particularity of their imaginative and moral visions—all in an effort to allow personhood itself to emerge as an undeniable fact making an unrefusable claim.

This chapter turns to Sōseki's many literary affiliations, in order to provide a corrective to the “isolate” persona, with its intimations of misanthropy and self-obsession. Selected shōhin episodes ...
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This chapter turns to Sōseki's many literary affiliations, in order to provide a corrective to the “isolate” persona, with its intimations of misanthropy and self-obsession. Selected shōhin episodes recall early mentors, bundan colleagues and protégés, and assorted eccentrics and oddballs. Some of these accounts are contemporaneous with the narrated events; others relate remembered incidents. Working within prevailing styles of anecdotal portrayal, Sōseki fashioned an amiable and solicitous voice quite distinct from, yet complementary to, the figure of the study-bound recluse. A journalistic category of memorial reminiscence is also studied here as a vehicle for reflections upon prominent literary lives and, inevitably, one's own mortality.Less

Literary Portraits : Mentors, Protégés, and Eccentrics

Marvin Marcus

Published in print: 2009-07-15

This chapter turns to Sōseki's many literary affiliations, in order to provide a corrective to the “isolate” persona, with its intimations of misanthropy and self-obsession. Selected shōhin episodes recall early mentors, bundan colleagues and protégés, and assorted eccentrics and oddballs. Some of these accounts are contemporaneous with the narrated events; others relate remembered incidents. Working within prevailing styles of anecdotal portrayal, Sōseki fashioned an amiable and solicitous voice quite distinct from, yet complementary to, the figure of the study-bound recluse. A journalistic category of memorial reminiscence is also studied here as a vehicle for reflections upon prominent literary lives and, inevitably, one's own mortality.

This chapter examines James Fenimore Cooper's literary career in New York City. It discusses his founding of the Bread and Cheese Club, or the “Lunch,” an all-male soiree of expansive membership, in ...
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This chapter examines James Fenimore Cooper's literary career in New York City. It discusses his founding of the Bread and Cheese Club, or the “Lunch,” an all-male soiree of expansive membership, in April 1823. It describes his journalistic work on horse racing and the challenges in finishing the novel The Pilot. This chapter also suggests that Cooper's literary and social life in the first half of 1823 hit the immovable wall of the world's opposition to mere desire.Less

Taking Manhattan

Wayne Franklin

Published in print: 2007-06-19

This chapter examines James Fenimore Cooper's literary career in New York City. It discusses his founding of the Bread and Cheese Club, or the “Lunch,” an all-male soiree of expansive membership, in April 1823. It describes his journalistic work on horse racing and the challenges in finishing the novel The Pilot. This chapter also suggests that Cooper's literary and social life in the first half of 1823 hit the immovable wall of the world's opposition to mere desire.

This chapter focuses on Marie d'Agoult's relationship with composer Franz Liszt. It discusses Marie's growing discontent with her relationship with her husband, her decision to open a leading salon ...
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This chapter focuses on Marie d'Agoult's relationship with composer Franz Liszt. It discusses Marie's growing discontent with her relationship with her husband, her decision to open a leading salon and play a role in the literary and artistic life of the period, and his first meeting with Liszt. It also describes the political events during this period, including King Charles X's failed attempt to regain the throne with the help of Caroline de Berry.Less

Elopement

Richard Bolster

Published in print: 2000-08-11

This chapter focuses on Marie d'Agoult's relationship with composer Franz Liszt. It discusses Marie's growing discontent with her relationship with her husband, her decision to open a leading salon and play a role in the literary and artistic life of the period, and his first meeting with Liszt. It also describes the political events during this period, including King Charles X's failed attempt to regain the throne with the help of Caroline de Berry.